Mexican X-plainer: Tamal vs. Tamale
There’s a debate raging on the Internet and inside Mexican American culture: What is the singular of “tamales”?
While I personally say “tamal,” there is absolutely no reason to shame people for saying “a tamale” instead of “a tamal,” especially when they’re speaking English.
Yes, in Mexican Spanish the singular is “tamal.” But it didn’t have to be.
Let’s think about Nahuatl. The Nahuatl word “tamalli” is both singular and plural (like all non-animate nouns). “Tamal” is the possessed form, and it always takes a possessive prefix: “notamal” means “my tamal/e[s],” for example.
The possessed form drops the absolutive suffix (-li in this case).
Another Nahuatl word that was adopted into Spanish the same way was “comal” (griddle), from the original “comālli.” The possessed form is “-comāl,” giving us, for example, “tocomāl” or “our comal.”
But not all -li words came into Spanish this way. Our beloved “chile” (chili pepper) comes from the Nahuatl “chīlli,” the possessed form of which is just “-chīl,” as in “nochīl” (my chili pepper).
No one is upset because we say “chile” instead of “chil” in Spanish, right?
See how silly this is? Another example is “mole.”
